SEMI SILENT

At present times I perceive that an ultimate hybridization of living and non living sensory stimuli our daily cognizance has to put up with is only a surface noise of de-personalized (and certainly unfinished) collective morphology we comply to. Opposing that, I choose to create poetry reflecting upon commonplaces of unfading human struggle to understand depths of grief and devaluation of life. And as a field of resonance surrounding those I am driven by hopeless pursuit of the embodiment of love with all of its complexities, that represent my personal psychological blueprint. Poetry is an elevated state, in my case it is an emotionally charged scenery, textural space, always abundant with aural density in almost traditional narrative. As a writer I am searching for the “mirror stress” in which my subconsciousness and my reality are becoming proprioceptive and leaning onto each other.
Death and love are deeply embedded in all-pervading existence, unfolding their vigorous discharge of life in profoundly intricate ways. One can only be humble if finds her/himself awake standing in the way of this one – same breath.

 

Regarding sound, for me the most important transference of energy there is, I intent to overplay with its geometries finding comfort in re-constructed memories (through intervention and accentuation of semi-closed bio-acoustic processes I extract from field recordings, with intention to mutate them into soundscape compositions). With this cognitive personalization of particular space and time mnemotopia as such becomes imaginatively tactile, thus emotionally recognizable.
Form of a flow, leans on auralization of inner dynamics rather then any aesthetically confined musical approach.

 

And last but not the least, by choosing male voice for the final sonification of the words I express a need to abandon binary social constructions of a gender, and push gender “source” in my experiences into its natural form – a gender spectrum with all of its gruesomely hidden complexities that a human nature actually posses.

 

Photo: Manja Ristić, 2019

 

Manja Ristić (1979) born in Belgrade. Violinist, sound artist, published poet. Finished postgraduate studies at the RCM, London (2004). As a classical solo / chamber musician, composer and improvisational musician Manja performed across Europe and in the US. In her recent work Manja is active in the field of instrumental electro–acoustics, soundscape composition, field recording & interdisciplinary sound related research. She is founder of the Association of Multimedia Artists „Auropolis“ (since 2004), that by her guidance developed distinctive number of cultural events, international projects and educational modules in the fields of contemporary scene and multimedia arts. She works and lives between the island of Korčula (Croatia) and Belgrade (Serbia). www.manjaristic.blogspot.com

 

Poetry, all sounds (recorded, played, composed, edited) by Manja Ristić
Poetry reading by Paul Leonard Murrey
Used short excerpt from the original track SUMMER, The Nightfall, collection of sound art by Manja Ristić published by Naviar Records, London (2018), www.naviarrecords.com

 

Version composed for SEMI SILENT in the frame of Sonic Future Residencies, program supported by AFCN.